What New Wooden Building Components Would You Like to Work On with Stora Enso?
Stora Enso is looking for solutions using structural cardboard, wood fibre components and insulation materials to construct buildings made of wood. Read more about the examples below, and reach out with your solution information.
When we talk about Building Components, we are referring to individual parts of a building superstructure, meaning the building elements that are above ground-level. These elements represent 12% of the total cost of construction of a building on average. Traditionally, these parts are made out of steel, concrete, or other carbon-based materials that are resource intensive to produce and not environmentally sound.
To tackle this, we are seeking ideas on how to replace traditional materials used in construction with wood and timber. Working solutions may include structural cardboard, structural wood fibre components, and high-performance insulation products.
It might sound like a tall order to replace strong materials like steel with renewable ones. However, Stora Enso’s wood products are extremely suitable for the task. Your solution is ideally one that can expand our Wood Products building material offering by using Stora Enso’s materials, working with our industry know-how and utilizing our global market reach to bring wood buildings to a new level. To give you a better idea of what we are seeking, here are three further examples to demonstrate what replacements are of interest to us.
Sustainable and Light Building Materials from Structural Cardboard
New Structural Cardboard materials have the potential to replace traditional non-load bearing building components used in forming the building superstructure. For example, traditional gypsum boards or plasterboard can be potentially replaced with corrugated cardboard products.
Compared to traditional alternatives, Structural Cardboard is lighter, making it easier to use in construction projects. Structural Cardboard is also high in fiber content, which makes it much more recyclable than alternatives.
The solution we are looking for here ideally uses corrugated board or similar renewable material, has an existing building material application and is easily recyclable. Do you have a solution that fits these criteria, or a completely novel approach to the same application? We would like to hear from you.
Replacing Steel with New Wood Fibre Composites
Steel studs are used to hold building components of structures together. The benefit in the traditional way of building has been that steel is highly durable and strong, which makes for lasting buildings. However, as mentioned earlier, it is not environmentally friendly and other materials like new Wood Fibre Composites can today reach the same strength and rigidity.
When cut down, a tree loses most of its inherent strength as a building material. However, Wood Fibre Composite materials can re-create the strength comparable to an original tree for example by creating different biocomposites. In other words, biocomposites can be integrated with fibers to make them even stronger and fatigue resistant. One such solution is integrating carbon fibre with wood fibre to create longer lasting building components.
If you are working with innovative Wood Fibre Composites for the building industry, we are definitely keen to hear from you.
Insulating Building Structures with Fiber-Based Foams
A properly insulated building is more energy efficient, a healthier environment for its occupants, and safer from accidents. Having insulators that complement the features of new wood building components is a must to build high quality wood structures. We are currently looking for example insulation foams that combine wood fibers with carbon-based materials, or other novel approaches to the same theme.
This opportunity is no longer open for submissions. See our active opportunities here.